One of the most unusual sites I witnessed in my travels was experiencing Christmas in Asia. I had been living in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam for 3 months when December 25th rolled around. In a country with no real religion, and no westernized consumerism (yet), Vietnam surprised me with their Christmas spirit.

Christmas in the western world seems to be more economic consumption than religion these days, so why should that be any different in Vietnam? The strange thing is that in Vietnam it seemed to be about neither. There was very little reference to anything religious about Christmas and there was really no one out shopping for gifts except for expats. So why do the Vietnamese care about Christmas? I never really knew, but my first guess was that they like any reason to drive their motorbikes around the city and get out of their homes! I may never understand the Vietnamese fascination with Christmas, but in the meantime, here’s what I was able to observe.